CHILDRENS TRANSPORTED THROUGH
COURIER IN AMERICA 1913-1920
..இது குழந்தைகள் எளிதாக பயணம் மற்றும் பெரும்பாலும் அது விலை இருக்க முடியாது. 1900 களின் முற்பகுதியில், சிலர் தங்கள் குழந்தைகளை அஞ்சல் பெட்டியிலிருந்து தபால் மூலம் அனுப்பினர்.
யு.எஸ் பார்சல் போஸ்ட் சேவையின் வழியாக பொதிகளை அனுப்புதல் ஜனவரி 1, 1913 அன்று தொடங்கியது. பொதிகள் 50 க்கு மேற்பட்ட பவுண்டுகள் எடையைக் குறைக்க முடியாது என்று குறிப்பிட்டுள்ளன, ஆனால் குழந்தைகள் அனுப்பப்படுவதைத் தவிர்ப்பது அவசியமில்லை. பிப்ரவரி 19, 1914 இல், நான்கு வயதான மே பையர்ஸ்டார்ப் பெற்றோர், அவரின் தாத்தா பாட்டியிடம், கிரேடில்வில்லே, இடாஹோவில் இருந்து ஐடஹோவில் உள்ள லேவிஸ்டனில் அனுப்பினர்.
ரயில்வே டிக்கெட் ஒன்றை வாங்குவதைவிட மேலாக வெளிப்படையாக மலிவானதாக இருந்தது. ரயில்வே தபால் பெட்டியில் பயணித்ததால், சிறிய ஜாக்கெட் தனது ஜாக்கெட் மீது 53 சென்ட் மதிப்புள்ள தபால் தலைகளை அணிந்திருந்தார்.
James Beagle was the first-known account of a child being sent through the mail. (Public Domain)
மே போன்ற உதாரணங்கள் கேட்டபின்னர், தபால் மாஸ்டர் ஜெனரல் மின்னஞ்சல் மூலம் குழந்தைகளை அனுப்புவதற்கு எதிரான ஒரு ஒழுங்குமுறை ஒன்றை வெளியிட்டார். இந்த படம் போன்ற நடைமுறையில் முடிவுக்கு ஒரு நகைச்சுவையான படம் என பொருள். (ஸ்மித்சோனியன் நிறுவனம் படத்தின் மரியாதை.)
One of several articles dated June 13, 1920 that say the Post Office will no longer let children be sent through the mail. (Los Angeles Times, ProQuest Historical Newspapers)
A Brief History of Post Office Cats
“It got some headlines when it happened, probably because it was so cute,” United States Postal Service historian Jenny Lynch tells Smithsonian.com.
Just a few weeks after Parcel Post began, an Ohio couple named Jesse and Mathilda Beagle “mailed” their 8-month-old son James to his grandmother, who lived just a few miles away in Batavia. According to Lynch, Baby James was just shy of the 11-pound weight limit for packages sent via Parcel Post, and his “delivery” cost his parents only 15 cents in postage (although they did insure him for $50). The quirky story soon made newspapers, and for the next several years, similar stories would occasionally surface as other parents followed suit.
In the next few years, stories about children being mailed through rural routes would crop up from time to time as people pushed the limits of what could be sent through Parcel Post. In one famous case, on February 19, 1914, a four-year-old girl named Charlotte May Pierstorff was “mailed” via train from her home in Grangeville, Idaho to her grandparents’ house about 73 miles away, Nancy Pope writes for the National Postal Museum. Her story has become so legendary that it was even made into a children’s book, Mailing May.
“Postage was cheaper than a train ticket,” Lynch says.
James Beagle was the first-known account of a child being sent through the mail. (P
Luckily, little May wasn’t unceremoniously shoved into a canvas sack along with the other packages. As it turns out, she was accompanied on her trip by her mother’s cousin, who worked as a clerk for the railway mail service, Lynch says. It’s likely that his influence (and his willingness to chaperone his young cousin) is what convinced local officials to send the little girl along with the mail.
Over the years, these stories continued to pop up from time to time as parents occasionally managed to slip their children through the mail thanks to rural workers willing to let it slide. Finally, on June 14, 1913, several newspapers including the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times all ran stories stating the the postmaster had officially decreed that children could no longer be sent through the mail. But while this announcement seems to have stemmed the trickle of tots traveling via post, Lynch says the story wasn’t entirely accurate.
“According to the regulations at that point, the only animals that were allowed in the mail were bees and bugs,” Lynch says. “There’s an account of May Pierstorff being mailed under the chicken rate, but actually chicks weren’t allowed until 1918.”
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Just a few weeks after Parcel Post began, an Ohio couple named Jesse and Mathilda Beagle “mailed” their 8-month-old son James to his grandmother, who lived just a few miles away in Batavia. According to Lynch, Baby James was just shy of the 11-pound weight limit for packages sent via Parcel Post, and his “delivery” cost his parents only 15 cents in postage (although they did insure him for $50). The quirky story soon made newspapers, and for the next several years, similar stories would occasionally surface as other parents followed suit.
One of several articles dated June 13, 1920 that say the Post Office will no longer let children be sent through the mail. (Lo
Beagle Baby
James Beagle was the first-known account of a child being sent through the mail. (Public Domain)
In the next few years, stories about children being mailed through rural routes would crop up from time to time as people pushed the limits of what could be sent through Parcel Post. In one famous case, on February 19, 1914, a four-year-old girl named Charlotte May Pierstorff was “mailed” via train from her home in Grangeville, Idaho to her grandparents’ house about 73 miles away, Nancy Pope writes for the National Postal Museum. Her story has become so legendary that it was even made into a children’s book, Mailing May.
“Postage was cheaper than a train ticket,” Lynch says.
Luckily, little May wasn’t unceremoniously shoved into a canvas sack along with the other packages. As it turns out, she was accompanied on her trip by her mother’s cousin, who worked as a clerk for the railway mail service, Lynch says. It’s likely that his influence (and his willingness to chaperone his young cousin) is what convinced local officials to send the little girl along with the mail.
Over the years, these stories continued to pop up from time to time as parents occasionally managed to slip their children through the mail thanks to rural workers willing to let it slide. Finally, on June 14, 1913, several newspapers including the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times all ran stories stating the the postmaster had officially decreed that children could no longer be sent through the mail. But while this announcement seems to have stemmed the trickle of tots traveling via post, Lynch says the story wasn’t entirely accurate.
“According to the regulations at that point, the only animals that were allowed in the mail were bees and bugs,” Lynch says. “There’s an account of May Pierstorff being mailed under the chicken rate, but actually chicks weren’t allowed until 1918.”
Last announcement
One of several articles dated June 13, 1920 that say the Post Office will no longer let children be sent through the mail. (Los Angeles Times, ProQuest Historical Newspapers)
But while the odd practice of sometimes slipping kids into the mail might be seen as incompetence or negligence on the part of the mail carriers, Lynch sees it more as an example of just how much rural communities relied on and trusted local postal workers.
“Mail carriers were trusted servants, and that goes to prove it,” Lynch says. “There are stories of rural carriers delivering babies and taking [care of the] sick. Even now, they’ll save lives because they’re sometimes the only persons that visit a remote household every day.”
Luckily, there are more travel options for children these days than pinning some postage to their shirts and sending them off with the mailman.
January 1913, one Ohio couple took advantage of the U.S. Postal Service’s new parcel service to make a very special delivery: their infant son. The Beagues paid 15 cents for his stamps and an unknown amount to insure him for $50, then handed him over to the mailman, who dropped the boy off at his grandmother’s house about a mile away.
Regulations about what you could and couldn’t send through the mail were vague when post offices began accepting parcels over four pounds on January 1, 1913. People immediately started testing its limits by mailing eggs, bricks, snakes and other unusual “packages.” So were people allowed to mail their children? Technically, there was no postal regulation against it.
“The first few years of parcel post service—it was a bit of a mess,” says Nancy Pope, head curator of history at the National Postal Museum. “You had different towns getting away with different things, depending on how their postmaster read the regulations.”
Pope has found about seven instances of people mailing children between 1913 and 1915, beginning with the baby in Ohio. It wasn’t common to mail your children, yet for long distances, it would’ve been cheaper to buy the stamps to send a kid by Railway Mail than to buy her a ticket on a passenger train.
In addition, people who mailed their children weren’t handing them over to a stranger. In rural areas, many families knew their mailman quite well. However, those two viral photos you might have seen online of postal workers carrying babies in their mailbag were staged photos, taken as a joke. A mailman might have carried a swaddled child who couldn’t walk, but he wouldn’t have let a diaper-wearing baby sit in a pile of people’s mail.
May Pierstorff
May Pierstorff, who was sent through the mail. (Credit: Smithsonian National Postal Museum)
In the case of May Pierstorff, whose parents sent her to her grandparent’s house 73 miles away in February 1914, the postal worker who took her by Railway Mail train was a relative. The Idaho family paid 53 cents for the stamps that they put on their nearly six-year-old daughter’s coat. Yet after Postmaster General Albert S. Burleson heard about this incident—as well as another inquiry someone had made that month about mailing children—he officially banned postal workers from accepting humans as mail.
Still, the new regulation didn’t immediately stop people from sending their children by post. A year later, a woman mailed her six-year-old daughter from her home in Florida to her father’s home in Virginia. At 720 miles, it was longest postal trip of any of the children Pope has identified, and cost 15 cents in stamps.
In August 1915, three-year-old Maud Smith made what appears to be the last journey of a child by U.S. post, when her grandparents mailed her 40 miles through Kentucky to visit her sick mother. After the story made the news, Superintendent John Clark of the Cincinnati division of the Railway Mail Service investigated, questioning why the postmaster in Caney, Kentucky, had allowed a child on a mail train when that was explicitly against regulations.
“I don’t know if he lost his job, but he sure had some explaining to do,” Pope says.
Though Maud seems to be the last successfully mailed child, others would later still tried to mail their children. In June 1920, First Assistant Postmaster General John C. Koons rejected two applications to mail children, noting that they couldn’t be classified as “harmless live animals,” according to the Los Angeles Times.
BY BECKY LITTLE
.Pope has found about seven instances of people mailing children between 1913 and 1915, beginning with the baby in Ohio. It wasn’t common to mail your children, yet for long distances, it would’ve been cheaper to buy the stamps to send a kid by Railway Mail than to buy her a ticket on a passenger train.
In addition, people who mailed their children weren’t handing them over to a stranger. In rural areas, many families knew their mailman quite well. However, those two viral photos you might have seen online of postal workers carrying babies in their mailbag were staged photos, taken as a joke. A mailman might have carried a swaddled child who couldn’t walk, but he wouldn’t have let a diaper-wearing baby sit in a pile of people’s mail.
May Pierstorff
May Pierstorff, who was sent through the mail. (Credit: Smithsonian National Postal Museum)
In the case of May Pierstorff, whose parents sent her to her grandparent’s house 73 miles away in February 1914, the postal worker who took her by Railway Mail train was a relative. The Idaho family paid 53 cents for the stamps that they put on their nearly six-year-old daughter’s coat. Yet after Postmaster General Albert S. Burleson heard about this incident—as well as another inquiry someone had made that month about mailing children—he officially banned postal workers from accepting humans as mail.
Still, the new regulation didn’t immediately stop people from sending their children by post. A year later, a woman mailed her six-year-old daughter from her home in Florida to her father’s home in Virginia. At 720 miles, it was longest postal trip of any of the children Pope has identified, and cost 15 cents in stamps.
In August 1915, three-year-old Maud Smith made what appears to be the last journey of a child by U.S. post, when her grandparents mailed her 40 miles through Kentucky to visit her sick mother. After the story made the news, Superintendent John Clark of the Cincinnati division of the Railway Mail Service investigated, questioning why the postmaster in Caney, Kentucky, had allowed a child on a mail train when that was explicitly against regulations.
“I don’t know if he lost his job, but he sure had some explaining to do,” Pope says.
Though Maud seems to be the last successfully mailed child, others would later still tried to mail their children. In June 1920, First Assistant Postmaster General John C. Koons rejected two applications to mail children, noting that they couldn’t be classified as “harmless live animals,” according to the Los Angeles Times.
BY BECKY LITTLE
May Pierstorff
May Pierstorff, who was sent through the mail. (Credit: Smithsonian National Postal Museum)
In the case of May Pierstorff, whose parents sent her to her grandparent’s house 73 miles away in February 1914, the postal worker who took her by Railway Mail train was a relative. The Idaho family paid 53 cents for the stamps that they put on their nearly six-year-old daughter’s coat. Yet after Postmaster General Albert S. Burleson heard about this incident—as well as another inquiry someone had made that month about mailing children—he officially banned postal workers from accepting humans as mail.
Still, the new regulation didn’t immediately stop people from sending their children by post. A year later, a woman mailed her six-year-old daughter from her home in Florida to her father’s home in Virginia. At 720 miles, it was longest postal trip of any of the children Pope has identified, and cost 15 cents in stamps.
In August 1915, three-year-old Maud Smith made what appears to be the last journey of a child by U.S. post, when her grandparents mailed her 40 miles through Kentucky to visit her sick mother. After the story made the news, Superintendent John Clark of the Cincinnati division of the Railway Mail Service investigated, questioning why the postmaster in Caney, Kentucky, had allowed a child on a mail train when that was explicitly against regulations.
“I don’t know if he lost his job, but he sure had some explaining to do,” Pope says.
Though Maud seems to be the last successfully mailed child, others would later still tried to mail their children. In June 1920, First Assistant Postmaster General John C. Koons rejected two applications to mail children, noting that they couldn’t be classified as “harmless live animals,” according to the Los Angeles Times.
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